


Fictober 2020 Ducktales Fills

by AmnesiaticRoses



Series: Fictober 2020 Fills [6]
Category: DuckTales (Cartoon 2017)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-27
Updated: 2020-10-31
Packaged: 2021-03-09 04:55:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 10,771
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27218986
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AmnesiaticRoses/pseuds/AmnesiaticRoses
Summary: Here lie my Fictober 2020 fills for Ducktales. :)Prompt 11: “I told you so.” Gyro is sure he knows what the suit can handle.Prompt 13: “I missed this.” Fenton catches some late-night TV with his mom.Prompt 15: “Not interested, thank you.” Fenton takes a business meeting.Prompt 17: “Give me a minute or an hour.” Huey and Fenton stumble on some villains.Prompt 22: “And neither should you.” -- Della shaped her boys by her absence.Prompt 28: “Do I have to do everything here?” -- Gyro is tired of bad guys in his lab.
Relationships: Fenton Crackshell-Cabrera & Gyro Gearloose, Fenton Crackshell-Cabrera & Huey Duck
Series: Fictober 2020 Fills [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1984177
Comments: 9
Kudos: 63





	1. Prompt 11: Choices

**Author's Note:**

> These are un-beta-ed, largely unedited and hastily written, since I'm trying to keep to writing about one a day. So, apologies if there are issues with them! Some are stories I thought about writing for a while. Some are short scenes I might turn into longer fics in the future. And some, I admit, were thrown together on a whim. Comments and critique welcome, as always.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fenton becoming Gizmoduck has meant a lot of extra work for Gyro. It's honestly quite a pain in the butt.

Gyro paced.

When Mr. McDuck, holder of the pursestrings, had determined that “Gizmoduck” was the “hero” that Duckberg needed, Gyro hadn’t agreed, but he had _agreed_ , if you take the difference. The idea itself? Pure madness. The thought that some half-baked intern in a mechanical utility suit would somehow many the city _safer_ rather than in _far more danger_ struck him as the same sort of fairy tale nonsense that led to children staying up late at night enthusiastically waiting for some allegedly benevolent creature to break into their homes and leave free items, as though there would be no strings attached to THAT down the line.

But while Mr. McDuck and Gyro were on the same wavelength regarding the jolly fat man, they were not seeing eye to eye on the superhero thing. And since Gyro didn’t hate the idea of … ugh … _Gizmoduck_ enough to potentially jeopardize access to his benefactor, he’d gritted his beak and tried to sound enthusiastic about it.

He liked to think he’d done a good job.

But the idea of actually managing the day-to-day nonsense of a superhero had turned out more complicated and irritating than he’d even imagined. For instance, despite being an intern with Gyro himself, the pilot of the suit wasn’t really a mechanical sort of thinker -- he could do passably well with wiring or a circuit board, but there was far more of a chemistry and physics bent in that one. Which meant while he could patch up the suit, and even make changes to it, he wasn’t as comfortable in that world as he was wearing the darn thing.

Which left it all to Gyro, of course. And did anyone think about that? Did anyone thank him? No, of course not. That wasn’t the flashy bit, why should anyone care if the suit was working well when Duckburg needed it?

And that was only the beginning.

There were the letters. Because people allegedly didn’t know where Gizmoduck lived (a fact Gyro assumed had to be a lie, the guy couldn’t keep the secret from literal children), they sent letters for him to McDuck Enterprises, since it publicly sponsored him. And the corporation wisely wanted nothing to do with them, so what did it do? It sent them here, to his place of work, where they were nothing more than a processed-pulp annoyance. _Thank you for helping me cross the street, Gizmoduck! Thank you for finding my puppy, Gizmoduck! Thank you for swooping in to grab the gunman holding those kids hostage, ending the incident without any injuries Gizmoduck_! A parade of saccharine paper waste.

And then there were nights like tonight. When Mr. McDuck and his family had hared off to some obscure corner of the world chasing money or mysticism, and some weather-based villain or something had attacked city hall (Seriously, there were so many weather baddies at this point, Gyro didn’t even bother learning names).

Gyro got notification on his phone whenever the suit started activating its more combat-oriented functions. Because combat functions meant combat. And combat meant the suit getting damaged.

And that meant Gyro up late repairing the darn thing, because if he let the city’s superhero fall into disrepair while Mr. McDuck was away … well, neither he nor his expensive invention ideas wanted to think what would happen after that.

The feed was mostly audio and a series of indicators showing the integrity of various systems -- power, the bigger weapons systems, propulsion, core movement, pie filling levels, etc. Mostly, watching them felt about like watching UV-protective resin coating dry. Sometimes he tinkered while he watched, but sometimes?

Sometimes he paced.

Tonight was one of those nights. The weather guy had attacked after a city council meeting about the curriculum in the Duckburg City Public Schools. Apparently he wanted meteorology to be a full year of study for every class in the fifth grade, and when the city council refused to vote on it (because the school board and not the city council would be the ones voting on a curriculum, Gyro assumed), he had decided to throw a tantrum and was holding the council, two reporters and everyone who’d shown up for the meeting hostage with an overly excited lightning storm.

The reason he’d chosen to pace instead of tinker this evening was that all the lightning was wreaking absolute havoc on the wifi that was beaming all this data back to the lab. He had the readouts on one of the larger displays, and the audio feed piping in through the lab speakers, but every once in a while the inane banter between hero and villain would break up in an absolutely ear-splitting burst of static. The sound invariably made Gyro jump, then he’d hop over, checking the readout and waiting for the feed to stabilize. And each time, it would come up -- power dropping but at an expected rate, pie filling holding steady, movement systems at ninety-five percent with some limited movement in the left shoulder which had been injured, as far as Gyro could tell, when Gizmoduck had dived to save someone from a blast of lightning. Nothing to be worried about. They just had to wait it out because getting hit by lightning was perhaps one of the worst things for the suit to handle.

Gyro paced.

“Professor Gearloose?” came a voice over the comm -- not the loud, self-assured tones of Gizmoduck, but the quieter, more urgent ones Gyro was more familiar with.

“Intern,” Gyro said by way of reply, expecting his word -- and tone -- to be picked up by the mics in the lab.

“I think something’s going on.”

“Things have been going on for almost an hour,” Gyro replied, unimpressed. “You should know, you were there.”

“No, I mean … something else.”

As he said this, Gyro finally picked up on a few facts. First, this marked the first time tonight the comm had been used for communication, not just monitoring the sounds at the scene. Second, it sounded like the intern was trying to keep his voice low.

And third? Well, even underwater, Gyro finally noticed the pickup in lightning activity. Echoes of lightning bolts were even making themselves seen all the way down here. It looked almost like a strobe light going off up there.

“What?” Gyro said, doing his best not to sound irritated or impatient despite being both of those things at the moment.

“He’s building up for something big. I don’t know, it’s looking apocalyptic up here. I think he’s going to try to take out the whole building with some sort of supercharged lightning bolt!”

“What makes you think…” Then Gyro’s mind wandered back over the past hour of ranting he’d half-heard from this weather villain and he answered his own question. “He told you that, didn’t he?”

“He did, but I didn’t think he actually had the power. Take out some of the brickwork, maybe, but he wasn’t showing anything like enough power to bring down a building.”

“What changed?”

“He pulled something out of the storm generator he’s using, and everything started ramping up.

“Describe it.” And as the intern did, Gyro’s suspicion quickly switched to certainty. Some sort of limiter. He’d put something similar in his own weather changing device before Mr. McDuck shut that avenue of study down. The problem was the limiter also acted as a regulator, and without it, the machine would cycle into ever-higher levels of power until…

“He absolutely can take down city hall with that machine,” Gyro said, urgency building in his chest like a physical pressure. “If that thing is allowed to continue, it might take out the whole surrounding block with it.”

“The whole … oh no, what am I going to do, what am I going to do?” The intern was clearly not talking to him anymore.

Not being directly addressed had never stopped Gyro before. “You need to get out of there,” he said. “Get the people and get out of there.”

“I can’t!” he hissed back. “There are too many. Not just in City Hall, but in most of the buildings around here, people got trapped by the fight. There have to be a hundred that I can see from here, and … I’ll just have to move it”

“What, through the streets?” Gyro asked, trying to emphasize just how terrible an idea this was. “It’s going to follow you. All you’ll be doing is picking a new spot for the guy to destroy.”

“If I fly-”

“You’ll just speed up the process,” Gyro said, frustrated that his intern didn’t understand the workings of a weather machine just because he’d never build or worked on one before. “It’s like magnets, the closer the machine is to the storm, the sooner that mega-bolt is going to come down.”

A pause. Then, “But it’ll stop at the machine, right?”

“Of course it’ll…” Gyro realized what he was unintentionally condoning in the middle and threw the brakes on hard. “Wait, wait, you can’t do that. The suit can’t handle it.”

“The city can’t handle it,” the intern came back quietly. And he was right.

Gyro tried to think. “The body of the suit should be able to take a lot of the load,” he said, voice dropping into a clinical tone, words coming fast. “But this isn’t like a normal lightning bolt. Do you have time to bond anything to it that could work as a static wick of sorts?”

“There’s no time,” he said. “And I don’t have a properly conductive bonding agent anyway.”

“Then how about-”

“There’s no time,” he repeated, and the sounds in the background shifted. He could hear the copter blades in the background, and the weather guy shouting in unintelligible rage.

“That suit is tied into your brain,” Gyro practically shouted. Why wasn’t he listening? “If you throw yourself directly into Thor’s temper tantrum, then-”

“Dr. Gearloose, you worked on this suit dozens of times,” the intern said.

“Yes, so you should listen to me when I say-”

“I think it’s stronger than you think it is. I think you underestimate your work. “I think I’m going to be safe.”

“You idiot intern, you-”

KA-BOOM. The sound of lightning striking the suit and the machine and the intern lanced deafeningly through the lab, so loud that it made Gyro jump, startled, and left his ears ringing.

The volume made the silence that followed all the worse.

“Intern?” Gyro asked into the quiet, even though a strike like that had to have taken out the systems. It might have kicked to auxiliary for a safe landing, but communications would be gone. The readouts from the suit had gone dark.

So Gyro paced.

* * *

Two hours later, the elevator started up. Gyro looked up from where he was working over the suit’s blueprints to see the doors pop open and reveal his intern, a little worse for wear and lugging that familiar duffle bag. The guy’s eyes roved over the lab before landing on the invetor.

“Dr. Gearloose!”

He sounded entirely too chipper. Gyro carefully tucked the blueprints into a waterproof sleeve and stood up. “What’s wrong?” he asked.

“Nothing!” The intern sounded super enthusiastic about that answer. “The cops said I should go to the ambulance, but … hahaha no.” He started giggling, and for a moment, Gyro wondered if he’d spent the last two hours out getting drunk. If that were the case he wouldn’t have to fire the guy, he;d have to make sure he met with an accident before Mr. McDuck came back instead because Gyro was not going to put up with being left here, alone, wonder if-

“I told you so,” Fenton said, grinning at Gyro. “The lightning didn’t get to my brain. The suit handled it fine! Well.” He paused, then corrected himself. “Not fine. Like a blackout, too much light then everything goes dark and whoooosh, down I went.” He simulated the descent with one hand, like a child. When his palm impacted the work table, he almost knocked himself off balance.

Gyro blinked. “The auxiliary didn’t auto-loose the parachute?”

The intern squinted at him, mouthing the word parachute like someone who’d never heard the word before. Then his eyes lit up. “Oh! Yeah, the parachute happened. But then it caught on one of the gargoyles and riiiiiip.” He really drew the sound effect out. “The last bit was fast. Really fast. Bumped my head.” He giggled again, one hand going to the side of his head.

Where, Gyro could now see, a bit of dried blood crusted among the feathers.

“You gave yourself a concussion?” Gyro demanded.

“Teeechnically the ground gave it to me,” The intern corrected him. “But it caught me, so I can’t be too mad.”

“Come on. We need to get you to a hospital. Now.” Gyro said, walking over and turning him back toward the door.

The intern followed him unsteadily but with clear determination. “Right,” he said. “Hey, did you know you build in a breaker? Up there?” He tapped at the air where the Gizmoduck helmet would normally have been.

“I what?”

“It disengaged when the surge came,” the intern told him with the severity of a child explaining a very serious diorama of toys. “Disconnected from my brain. Just as the lightning hit. You don’t remember?”

And now, suddenly, he did. He’d put that in almost as an afterthought -- a clearly forgotten afterthought. But once the intern said the suit had been rewired to use an organic processor … well, all those thoughts of things going wrong had swirled in his head, and he had spent an afternoon putting together a couple different prototypes. Testing. Installing the best. Forgetting about it. Worried about literally nothing.

Well, not worried. He hadn’t been worried. Of course not.

“Let’s go,” he said, ignoring the fact that they were both already in the elevator. He hated that the night was about to become a lot longer while he got the concussed idiot medical care, to make sure his brain wasn’t leaking out the side of his head.

But one thing for sure. He was absolutely done pacing for tonight.


	2. Prompt 13: Daytime TV

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some days, Fenton just really needs a break.

In college, Fenton had steeled himself for the idea that sometimes, you have to work to the job, not the clock. He expected late nights in the lab with his colleagues, working on some new breakthrough. He’d imagined it over late-night papers: they would take turns making strong coffee for everyone and pour over the problem until -- eureka! -- the answer came and they could all go home, job well done.

While college-him would have been excited beyond measure to hear that he’d eventually be a superhero, he also expected that a late night might not mean eight or ten at night, and might instead mean one or two in the morning.

He dragged the duffle containing the suit through the front door as quietly as he could, hoping not to wake M’ma. Well after midnight on a Thursday night … it would just make her own Friday at work more difficult. 

The house lay dark, but not quiet -- she’d left the TV on, volume low, showing syndicated episodes of _El Amor y el Traicion_. As Fenton eased the costume inside and locked the door behind him, a woman on the TV (Sofia, he thought her name was) clung to the arm of … was that Raul? Or Roberto? They’d been … twins, right? And one was the evil twin, but after about two years they’d revealed that all of the evil he did was to convince their godmother, who put a curse on them, that the curse was working and…

Oh man, He definitely needed some sleep.

He heaved to pull the bag up onto his shoulder and began creeping across the living room toward his room. If he could get to sleep in the next half hour he could get a good five hours before it was time to get up and go to work. It would be more than he got last night. Or the night before. Assuming he could get to sleep in the next half hour. Which, statistically speaking, was unlikely given the data from the last three months. But he could-

“Fenton?”

M’ma’s voice, unexpected in the darkness, brought him to a halt. For a second, he felt disoriented by it -- that didn’t sound like it came from her bedroom. It took another couple seconds for his brain to put it all together.

The TV was on because she was watching it. 

“Can’t sleep?” he asked, trying to sound cheerful.

“Can’t call and let your mother know you’re going to be late?” she replied wryly.

He glanced back toward the door, and in his mind, toward the accident out on the ocean. Everything was fine. Everyone was safe. But ferrying everyone from the sinking ship to safety on shore had been a near thing, and he’d pushed the engines in the suit right to the edge, just a  _ little  _ faster, because you didn’t want to be too late for the last survivors.

“Sorry. I was a little busy,” he replied, looking back but unable to look her in the eye.

“Come. Sit.”

He looked longingly toward his bedroom. That five hours of sleep was looking less and less likely. But what, was he going to blow off his mother after she waited up for him?

So he set the duffle down behind the couch and came around to sit next to her. His posture was that of a naughty child called to the principal’s office -- straight back, shoulders in, hands knotted together on his knees. 

For a long few seconds, they sat there in near silence as Sofia exposited about finding her husband (or was it his twin?) in bed with another woman who worked with him at the hospital. _She’s mad_ , he thought. _Why else wait up? But about what. It can’t be tonight’s work. Did I forget to lock the door this morning? Did I do something that interfered in one of her investigations by accident? Maybe I-_

“We used to watch this show back when you were just in grade school. Do you remember?”

Well, this wasn’t what he’d expected. “Kind of,” he said, not wanting to admit he could still remember the names, and some of the plotlines, of this convoluted old show.

She made a thoughtful little hum. “I think I remember the day we watched this episode. It was the day after the fifth grade science fair. You stayed home sick.”

He felt his face grow warm. “Ah. I think you might be right,” he said.

She chuckled a little. Clearly this was a far less embarrassing memory for her than for him. “Do you remember what happened?”

“Yes, M’ma,” he said.

But as though she hadn’t heard him, she said, “You were going to make that volcano, but then you had an idea. Always with the ideas, even back then. You stayed up so late, working on it. Turning milk into…”

“Plastic,” he supplied, giving up and relaxing on the couch. He could still feel the tension in his limbs, a visceral force. As he sat on their familiar couch, he felt that start to ease away a bit. He really didn’t sit on the couch enough anymore. 

“Ah, yes. With an entire gallon of milk from the fridge, then you asked for more.” Her tone was caught between chiding and chuckling. “I would tell you lights out, then I’d come back half an hour later to find you with the flashlight, working again. You got it done though. I wasn’t sure, but you did it.”

He laughed, remembering. The teacher had been surprised when the presentation wasn’t the same as what he’d submitted, but they’d had to admit he did a good job. And he had -- even if it took basically three straight overnights to put together. But once the idea had hit him, he’d had to see it through.

“You had a fever before we even got home,” she reminisced. “But you still wanted to go to school the next morning. Remember?”

“Ah… yeah.”

“I never understood that,” she said, nudging him. “Most kids want a day off from school. You cried over it.”

“Well…”

He wasn’t going to say anything more. But he was tired, and she was watching him with that curious look, the one that told him that she, at least, honestly wanted to hear what he had to say right now. So he explained with a bit of shame, “I thought you were disappointed in me. Because I got sick from not listening. I felt … guilty.”

“Ah, pollito.” She reached over with one arm to pull him into a hug and he accepted it. “Not disappointed. Worried. But never disappointed. And it was kind of nice, just sitting home for a day with you.”

They sat in silence for a couple minutes, letting the drama play out on the TV. The show had been out of production for years, and the video quality showed its age. It gave him a sense of nostalgia, just watching it. He remembered other days watching this with his mother -- snow days, or holidays. It felt … warm. Comfortable.

“So, what brought this on?” he asked after a bit. 

She looked over at him, a flat, knowing look that spoke volumes. “Because I’m worried,” she said, as though that were obvious. And he guessed in retrospect, it was.

“It’s fine though,” he said. “I’m fine.”

She looked at him another couple seconds, then sighed heavily. “I know you are,” she said. “Until you’re not. Fenton. I know you. I know you do every job you have the best you possibly can. You take care of everything. Except yourself. Look at you. You’ve gotten, what, ten hours sleep in the last three days?”

“Eleven,” he said defensively. Then, under her gaze, he quietly added, “If you round up?” when she just raised an eyebrow, he deflated. “Yes. Fine. I admit it, there hasn’t been a lot of time lately. There’s work during the day, and lately it seems that bad luck is just striking all over. And nothing easy, no simple run in, pie in the face of a bank robber and I’m done. Complicated things. And it’s … I’m tired. I’m tired, but no one else can do it.”

He looked down at his clasped hands -- until he felt a gentle pressure on his cheek, lifting his face, turning it to face his mother.

“Listen,” she said. “You do … so much good. You save so many people. And you have to trust us sometimes.”

“I don’t get what you-”

“Trust us,” she said, gentle but unsmiling. Staring into his eyes, willing him to understand. “Before Gizmoduck, people were rescued. People were saved. If you take a night off, we will not all fall apart. And then you will be you when we need you. Do you understand?”

He thought about it. She wasn’t wrong. The world had other heroes -- it had people like her. Maybe… maybe he should think about that a little more. An exhaustion-born mistake could be disastrous. And maybe it didn’t even need to be the Gizmoduck side of his life he took some time from.

“You know,” he said, decision made. “I missed this. Is it OK if I watch the rest of the episode with you?”

“Are you sure you don’t need to get to bed?” she teased.

“Maybe I’ll just take tomorrow off from the lab,” he said, grinning back at her.

And on the TV, high drama continued.


	3. Prompt 15: Business Lunch

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fenton gets asked to lunch to discuss a business opportunity. Turns out, it's not much of an opportunity.

The letter had arrived without a return address, which had set off some warning bells for Fenton and ALL of the warning bells for his mother. 

"What is this?" She gestured to it. "What sort of fool thinks we'd-" She trailed off as Fenton just opened it the way he would any other piece of junk mail, giving him a look of disbelief mixed with anxiety that, once upon a time, would have meant he was grounded, big-time.

"No one would send me a bomb or something through the mail," he argued.

But it didn’t turn out to be either junk mail or some sort of booby trap. It was, instead, a letter inviting Fenton to a “lunch meeting to discuss a potential scientific opportunity.” It didn’t even use a name, just starting “To the lucky resident” instead.

His mother’s eyes further narrowed. She didn’t even need to say anything -- he knew the contents made her even more suspicious. And to be fair, Fenton couldn’t blame her. To a detective, this had to look like step one in either a scam or crime. 

But he’d already decided to check it out. The “meeting” was to be held at a fairly popular cafe called Serene Subsistence, so the chances of someone trying something were low. And if the person knew where he lived, they also probably knew he was Gizmoduck -- he wasn’t sure anyone in the neighborhood didn’t. So if they did try something, he had ways to handle the trouble.

So the next day, Fenton made his way to the cafe. Since it was a nice spring day and since the letter hadn’t specified any particular seating arrangements, he chose to sit at a small outdoor table in front of the place, shaded by a blue-striped umbrella and looking through the minimalistic menu. 

Fenton hadn’t eaten at Serene Subsistence before, and now that he’d arrived, he sort of understood why. His instincts must have seen something in the decor, or in the sign design, and warned him off. Instead of describing the various options, the menu gave each one just a picture, a name -- something like “the Green Continent” or “the October Surprise” -- and a small list of icons to indicate whether the meal was low-salt, low-fat, gluten-free, all-organic or a host of other things. Huge swaths of white space surrounded each entry.

“You’d think they could put a few lists of ingredients,” Fenton mused out loud, squinting at the menu as though that might reveal hitherto unseen text.

“Awww. come on, where’s the fun in that?”

“You.” The word was out of his mouth before he could stop it, disgusted and angry and very out of place in this hip cafe. If that hadn’t drawn people’s attention, the way the glassware and silverware rattled as he slammed the menu to the tabletop would have.

Mark Beaks waved a hand at him dismissively as he pulled up the selfie camera on his phone and snapped a picture of himself in front of the table. “Come on, calm down, we’re not here to fight. We’re here to talk business.”

“I wouldn’t be here if I’d known I’d be talking business with you,” Fenton said, enunciating hard to prevent his full anger from leaking through. 

Beaks grinned at him as though he were a kid who just got his times tables right. “Of course. That’s why I didn’t put my name on it. Uh-duh.” He pulled one of the other chairs at the table out and plopped into it without looking, eyes already back on the phone. “So, yeah, thanks for not looking into that too much, I would have felt really stupid if I get here and you hadn’t shown up.”

Fenton would have loved to have done that. He would have loved to be anywhere but here. Just showing up had given this arrogant tech addict a win, and this guy liked nothing better than wins. Which left him which the difficult task of trying to decide if leaving or staying would give this guy another win.

Or, which would be better for _him_. After all … what did Beaks want? Why would he be here? If he was plotting something, odds were good that just letting him talk would get it out into the air. Would that be worth dealing with a bit of Beaks to find that out? Maybe stop something before it started?

With a sigh that couldn’t even contain all of the disappointment he felt at doing this, Fenton sat back down. “All right,” he said. “What do you want?”

“Simple. I’m headhunting.”

For a brief moment -- blame too many supervillains -- Fenton thought he was talking like … literal headhunting. Like decapitating people. Luckily, before he could let his reaction to that get onto his face, the clinical part of his mind reminded him that this was a business meeting, and that in business parlance, headhunting had a whole other meaning. 

“So, what, are you checking someone’s references?” Fenton asked, trying not-terribly-hard to cut the venom out of his voice. “Looking for recommendations? People who might be willing to build a body-bulking villain serum to-” His mind put two and two together and came up with an answer he did not like.”Are you trying to hire Dr. Gearloose away? Because whatever his reputation, he’s very loyal to the-”

“Gear wha?” Beaks finally looked up from his phone again, and he looked and sounded so puzzled that Fenton felt sure it had to be real. Any skill Beaks had at deception didn’t really center on fooling others with an act so much as just ignoring most people so you never had to worry about fooling them.

Despite that Dr. Gearloose not being the target was good news, Fenton found himself somewhat insulted on his mentor’s behalf. “He’s one of the greatest scientific minds on the planet,” Fenton said. “But you’d never get him away from his lab.”

“Ohhhhh! The guy whose stuff always goes evil!” Beaks said, looking pleased at having worked this out. “Yeah, no. Not interested. Scrooge can keep that stuff. Not good for the Waddle image when things suddenly go all…” He finished the thought by curling one hand into a claw-like shape and making a rasping sound that Fenton assumed was meant to personify “evil.” 

But if he really, honestly didn’t care about Dr. Gearloose … “So why are you here?”

“For you-” something about the way he said it made Fenton think there was initially meant to be another word there -- his name probably. But Beaks had probably forgotten it. It was certainly on brand. “I said it in the letter, right?”

“The letter was vague,” Fenton pointed out. “And it’s not like the two of us are exactly on good terms.”

Again Beaks wave a hand, as though dismissing the entirely valid criticism out of hand. “Past is past,” he said. “Just let it go. I want to offer you a spot at my company and I don’t want any misunderstandings to get in the way of that.”

“Misunderstandings?” Fenton’s voice rose again, drawing more stares. Forcing his tone back to an annoyed murmur, he added, “Like when you put countless lives in danger just for your … your click count?”

“Clicks? What, no,” Beaks said, seeming scandalized. But Fenton counted in his head. Three. Two. One. “It’s likes, man. Engagement is key. Clicks. Who even clicks on something anymore…” 

“Whatever,” Fenton said. 

“But yeah, I meant misunderstandings like that,” Beaks added, almost as an afterthought. “We just need to move past that and see if we can come to a beneficial arrangement.”

The absolute nerve of this guy. “Listen,” he said, and this time it really was a bare whisper. “The suit will never go anywhere near you or your-”

“Wait, wait wait.” Beaks interrupted, shaking his head. “Not that. You. I got to hear some of what you showed off to Dee on that infiltration mission, some seriously interesting stuff in there. We could use someone with that sort of brainpower in our labs.”

That brought him up short. Him? The offer still wasn’t tempting, but that one reveal had changed the entire perception of their conversation. This was about him? About science? 

_And also about the info he learned from spying on what you thought was a date_ , the logical part of him mind reminded him unhelpfully.

“You want me to … invent things? For Waddle?” Fenton repeated, just to make sure. This felt wrong, like a trap. It seemed like something that might actually be part of a real business, not the sham that Beaks seemed to run.

Beaks was back on the phone again, and Fenton would have assumed he’d checked out entirely if he didn’t keep on answering questions and comments. “Well, yeah,” he said. “The awesome Waddle devices that trendy young influencers just have to have don’t invent themselves, you know. Slap our name and logo on them and boom! Instant must-have gear. Something for the shareholders to talk about. I gotta prove I can still bring in the cool -- and the cash, too.”

Ah. “So anything that the people in your lab, you take credit for?”

“Duh.” Beaks looked across the table at him, and for the first time in this entire conversion, it felt like he was actually being serious. “People don’t just want the goods, they want to feel like they’re buying into something larger than life. If I sold our phones under some other random name with a stodgy old buzzard as the CEO, you know what sort of market share that would get? None. Because people don’t just want a phone, they want a phone from me. It’s the same reason people react so strongly to you when the cops could usually do the exact same thing. Because they weren’t just saved, they were saved by a hero.”

He hadn’t thought about it that way before, and now, he sort of wished he never had. A hero? His mother was a hero. She’d saved as many people as he, probably more, and she also did the things needed to bring them to trial, to let justice do its work. All he could really do was stop what was right in front of him. Maybe Beaks was right about how it worked in business. But that was maybe the best reason of all to just stop listening to the idiocy that came out of his mouth. All it did was validate Beaks’ own sense of importance.

He stood. Started to leave. “Thanks, but I’ve got to go.”

A chair scraped. “Hey!” Beaks’ indignant voice followed him.

He felt the hand on his shoulder, trying to tighten with some degree of command or control, but it felt laughable. Weak. And then Beaks said, “Hey, amigo, hold on, tell me what the problem is. We can work something out.”

Whirling, Fenton said, “If I was interested, what would the starting pay be?”

Except he said it in Spanish. Not as fluid as his mother’s but still far more dancing than that one thudding word when Beaks has uttered it. 

He expected the confusion -- the tech CEO wasn’t fooling anyone into thinking he could actually speak another language. But he got the other thing he expected to see almost immediately. The narrowing of the eyes. The darkening of the expression, as anger took the edge off Beaks’ carefree attitude. He’d been asked a question, he didn’t understand the question, and he thought not being able to answer it made him look foolish. That more than anything else told him all he needed to know.

“All right. Not interested, thank you.”

He didn’t even wait around to see if Beaks reacted to that. He just walked away.


	4. Prompt 17: Save the Earth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gizmoduck and Huey stumble upon a plot that needs to be stopped.

Fenton thought Huey was many things. The kid was smart, smart enough that the sciency side of Fenton’s brain could already see a bright future out there for him. He didn’t always have the world smarts to match the book smarts, but hey, who was Fenton to judge that? Wasn’t he the same? The kid was thoughtful too, seeing quick answers to immediate problems. He could get overwhelmed, he could get tunnel vision, but he was a kid. He had a lot of time to grow out of those things.

But moments like now, Fenton wished he’d grow out of some of them just a little bit faster. 

“But if you just redirect the old cooling vents through the pie filling receptacle, you’d get the same thing as your pies, except an area of effect!” Huey said, moving around Gizmoduck with impressive speed as he examined the locations of the vents. 

Fenton wretched him run around, torn between a cringe at the thought of what Dr. Gearloose would do to him if he started digging into the suit’s guts -- much less letting a kid do it -- and a genuine amusement at just how excited the kid got about mechanical mundanities. 

And he supposed he could see where a multi-target pie filling attack could come in handy. Though the speed at which the suit put pies together made it basically a moot point in most instances. However…

“I thought we were here to work on your Crime Prevention badge,” Fenton said, trying to steer the conversation back toward their actual purpose.

“Yeah, sorry. I just can’t help myself.” Huey didn’t sound very sorry, and again, Fenton found it hard to be bothered by that. When Huey had asked to join him on a patrol so he could document potential safety improvements to this area of the city as part of his badge progress, Fenton had been happy to agree. Truth was, he didn’t just owe a lot to Huey’s uncle, he owed a lot to Huey himself. If he hadn’t been quick to act…

Well, things could have gone a lot worse.

The pair of them began walking through the area. This side of Duckburg was in the middle of a renaissance of sorts, which was partly why Huey had chosen this area for his project. It had been an industrial and warehouse section, but as the companies had moved production to cities _without_ eccentric billionaires whose meddling in the arcane routinely caused massive property damage, it left large swaths of cavernous, abandoned property. Recently, the city had made moves to reach out to the owners with grants, and to condemn properties whose owners could not be found, so they could tear down buildings which were becoming dangerously dilapidated. Several development companies had moved in, and the skeletons of new construction were all over the place -- a business park, a lot of retail, a transit hub. There were plans for a small park and a slightly larger amusement park.

As he’d explained when asking Fenton to accompany him, this area attracted Huey’s attention because it had fallen into a sort of valley, where there were so few people here that the police didn’t spend much time here, but the buildings were often half finished, making them easy targets for criminals looking for a place to hide or plot.

And Fenton thought the kid had probably asked for his help in part because as a hero, he’d be security-minded as well, and partly because that whole family was always on the go, always bosy. Wasn’t that why Mr. McDuck had given the OK to Gizmoduck in the first place?

But honestly, Fenton was glad he had, and here was a reason he was here in his suit and not just as plain old Fenton Crackshell Cabrera. Because Huey was right. Criminals had been using this area for a variety of activities. He’d had to step in on a few of them. And some of them were petty shoplifters checking out their haul of clothes or electronics, but some … some were a bit more serious.

It should be fine during the day, but just in case … well, just in case.

They made their way up a broad central street with the skeletons of buildings under construction on either side. Up ahead, the road came to a T-shape intersection at the park. Some of the trees remained from before, fully-grown arboreal specimens, but many of the trees were just saplings, hend straight by stakes and loose wiring. The grass had mostly grown in, but he could still see the straw peeking through where the more recent seed had been sown. 

“This is going to be a very nice area when it’s done,” Fenton observed. He could see the business campus up on the other side of the park, its taller, tan buildings looking over the mostly adolescent trees. 

“I agree. Which is why I don’t understand why they don’t have a comprehensive plan for maintaining the security of these sites,” Huey said. He had the tip of his pencil in his mouth as he observed the locks on the chain-link fences around the construction sites. “I understand the logistics have to be tough, coordinating so many companies, but really! It’s in all their best interests.” He shook his head and made some notes in his notebook. 

The park looked to be in good condition. They walked down smooth cobblestone walkways, noting all the benches and garbage cans. (“Garbage cans aren’t just there to keep the litter down,” Huey told him, tone confident, like he was giving a school presentation on material he already knew by heart. “A cleaner park encourages people to visit, and the traffic can help keep people from using the place for more nefarious purposes.”)

The next stop was the business park -- a nearly completed campus of buildings that all shared the same general features, but in different dimensions. The closest one was a seven-story buildings with an all-glass front facing the street. Another stood only three stories but had a much larger footprint, in an L shape, with a grassy area nestled in the crook. A few benches and a little stone garden made the area inviting, and a couple picnic tables might tempt future employees out there for a lunch in the sunshine. 

The exteriors looked good, but Fenton knew the insides were basically half done -- drywall and flooring was still going in, some of the windows still filled with boards and sheeting instead of glass, things like that. The low L-shaped building seemed to be a particular favorite of ne’er-do-wells who used this area as a hideout. 

“They did a really nice job around here,” Huey said, with sincere appreciation. “But I think they definitely need a couple more cameras. Look, what good is that going to do?”

He pointed at a camera, mounted under the roof overhang of the L-shaped building. Instead of watching either of the two doors it could see from there or the courtyard and the road beyond, it aimed high and far to the right. What could it see there but the wall?

“Give me a second to check that out, Fenton said, speeding over to underneath the camera, then extending the suit up until he was face to … er, well, face? With it. It looked even stranger from up here. There was a bend in the metal holding it to the building. Eyes narrowing, Fenton reached toward the rubberized coverage protecting all the wiring. It looked like someone had sliced it, and when he pulled it back…

_ Yup. Cut wires. I guess this helps explain how they keep getting in there.  _

As he returned to the ground, Huey arrived and asked, “What’s wrong?”

“Looks like vandalism. We should inform the police and the security company.”

“I-”

“Eat gum, polluting scum!”

Fenton started to turn, saw an indistinct blob of … something coming at him and acted on instinct. He put himself between the projectile and Huey in the split second before it hit. Hoping this wasn’t some sort of explosive or-

The stuff hit not with a slam, but with a weird sort of gooshy sound. At the same instant, his movement slammed to a halt, rattling Fenton a bit in the suit. A moment later and the readouts were screaming at him: **air intake blocked -- missile hatches sealed -- sensors malfunctioning -- Movement systems locked**. Even the visor had been blacked out by the attack. He tried to raise the arms, to try to scrape it clear, but his arms only moved a little bit before seemingly being yanked back to the position he’d been in when he was initially hit.

Fenton wasn’t panicking, not yet, but he was worrying. _Can’t move, can’t see, can’t use most of the suit’s functions. What do I do? I need to see. And the suit is useless. Maybe once I see the problem… _

“Blathering Blatherskite.”

Usually, the keyword would release the whole suit. This time, the suit tried to do as usual, but whatever held it wasn’t letting go even for this. The pieces just kind of came off and remained around him in a jumble. Fenton shoved his way free of the pieces, doing his best to avoid the sticky, rubbery substance that had immobilized the suit. It didn’t quite work though -- he was lucky enough to only come away with some missing feathers on his arm and the side of his neck where the stuff touched him and he’d had to rip himself free. Huey helped him once he got partway out, and together they moved away from the suit -- which now looked like nothing more than a jumble of metal pieces wrapped in pink. He looked toward the third-story window where the shot had come from. Who could have-

“Hey boss! It’s just a regular guy,” A voice with a heavy drawl drifted downfrom above. From one of the windows. “It’s not a robot, just a suit.”

“Huey, we need to get out of here,” Fenton said, trying to keep an eye on every window at once. 

But before they could run, someone leaned out of one of the windows again. This time, Fenton got a good look at the weapon. It sort of had the look of a rocket launcher, but it definitely hadn’t shot a rocket. It actually looked like chewing gum. The area had almost no cover. And that weapon likely had some range.

“Change of plans,” Fenton said, and apparently Huey was already on the same wavelength because he’d already started running toward one of the windows that had plywood in place of glass. The guy upstairs leaned out, trying to keep them in sight, but theplywood was on the inside. And the two ducks hopped into the recess just as he fired the gun again. A mound of the pink goo plopped down where they’d just been.

Up above, they could hear the voices echoing. “I think I missed em.”

“Them? I thought you said it was that one robot guy.”

“Well, the other one was a kid. What, I’m going to be worried about a kid?”

“That kid probably has a phone on him! They both do, numbskull! Just arm the bomb and let’s get out of here.”

Fenton and Huey exchanged a look. Bomb? What had they stumbled into?

Because of the unfinished walls, they could hear scuffling around upstairs, then the sound of footsteps pounding across the floor, receding away from them down the longer wing of the building. As they faded, Fenton’s mind was going a mile a minute. 

“We need to get out of here,” he said, more to himself than Huey. “But there could be other people here. Even if they didn’t trap anyone else with that strange weapon, what if there are people working on the buildings? Even if not here, depending on how big the bomb is, it could take out others. If I … wait! Where are you going?”

Huey had pried up the corner of the board covering the window and slipped inside just as Fenton noticed. 

“We have to find that thing and defuse it, right?” Huey called back through the board.

He knew the futility of shouting at the kid to come back, to run, to get out of here. He was already inside, and his family had a reckless streak a mile wide. Even Huey, for all his plans and lists, could succumb to it when there was a clear right and wrong in front of him. So cursing the string of choices that brought them here, Fenton kicked at the board until it moved enough for him to slip inside after the boy.

Finding the bomb turned out to be a pretty simple mystery to solve. They just followed a trail of food waste up a set of cement stairs to the third floor, down a hall and into a sizable space that, once finished, might eventually be a conference room. A few bugs milled around the banana peels and bread crusts that lay scattered around the large wooden box -- and the mass of wires and electronics inside. 

Fenton peered inside. Not an explosive, not really. It looked like … chemicals. At least two vials. The sides of the glass containers were frosted, preventing him from even guessing what was inside. The timer -- there was always a timer -- said they had a bit under 10 minutes to deal with this thing.

Fenton squeezed his eyes shut, trying to remember back to working on circuits. Mechanical stuff wasn’t really his forte. The vials were touching. Would the “bomb” mix them by opening a passage to one from the other, or just crack them both, releasing the chemicals into the environment where they could mix freely and…

“I think I can defuse this.”

Honestly, for a couple seconds upon seeing the messily made bomb, Fenton had forgotten Huey in the urgency of stopping it from going off. Explosions were bad. But chemicals … anything could happen. They could go a lot further than a blast radius. Linger for years. They could make this whole area uninhabitable. Go into cloud form and move over other parts of the city. And do who knew what. Quirky villains could come up with things that did more than just poison a person. 

But Huey was here, and he was staring intently into the guts of the thing, as Fenton had a moment before. 

“You think you can defuse … a bomb?”

“Well, it’s not something I’ve had a lot of practice at, but I may have gone a little … overboard … studying for the Junior Woodchucks’ robotics and circuitry badges. Plus, I  _ may  _ have studied up on it specifically, just in case.”

Fenton wasn’t even sure how to take that. Was this that hyper preparedness talking? Or was this a situation where he considered finding a bomb such a legitimate possibility that understanding how to handle one was just a natural course of study for some afternoon?

But then again, he realized, this kid had rewired the Gizmoduck armor, sight unseen, on the fly. He looked nervous. But he was also concentrating, using the pencil from before to carefully push back the wires here and there. He … honestly did look like he knew what he was doing, and Fenton would only be guessing. If he knew what the chemicals were in there, he might be able to come up with something to neutralize it at the moment of detonation. But he was flying blind.

“Ok,” he said. “You take care of that. But if you want me to help, or take over, just say the word. OK?”

“Sure. Give me a minute,” he said. Then, after a couple seconds, his fingers stilled as he added, “or an hour. I wouldn’t say no to that.”

“I don’t know if we can do anything about the time,” Fenton said, willing his voice to say calm. “So if you are anything less than sure about this, say so. Otherwise, I’m going to call the police. Let them know. They may have some advice.”

When Huey didn’t ask for help immediately, Fenton stepped away to let the kid concentrate and called the cops. They got the details from him, and said they’d call back the moment they got ahold of one of their bomb experts. 

That done, he went back into the room and sat nearby. A show of support and trust. And to be there, just in case the kid needed him.

* * *

Twenty minutes later, police were sweeping all the buildings on the site, looking for any more bombs or other weaponry. A talkative young detective was supposed to be taking Fenton’s statement, but things weren’t  _ exactly  _ going like that.

“I mean, want to get angry at businesses that are polluting the river or something, sure, I get that.” the detective looked like he hadn’t slept properly in some time. He had his notepad and pen out, but was gesturing with them instead of using them for their intended purpose. “But they were mad because tearing down rotting old death traps was killing bugs. Bugs! They’re really escalating though. A bomb? Usually they just chain themselves to the front door of the company headquarters or something.”

“That sounds … inconvenient,” Fenton said, a bit at a loss as to why the guy was telling him about the suspects like this.

“It wasn’t that bad,” the guy said. “They kept only chaining themselves to one door and there were like … four. So it was a strange choice. Though I guess I’d prefer they keep doing stuff like that to repurposing used chewing gum as a weapon or trying to seed a building with poisonous mold spores.”

“Should you be telling me this?”

“Ah, probably not,” the detective said, but he didn’t look terribly bothered about it. 

As he wandered off, Huey ran over. “The reporter wanted to ask me about how I defused the bomb,” He said. “Dewey is never going to believe this. Or else he’s never going to forgive me.” He seemed really gleeful about either option.

“Well, I’m just grateful,” Fenton said, putting a hand on Huey’s shoulder. “You really came through. If they have a hero badge, I’ll nominate you.”

“There isn’t,” Huey said matter of factly. Then, after a pause, he hesitantly asked, “but once you get the suit out of the gum -- and speaking of that, I’d recommend peanut butter for that -- can we finish the safety survey?”

And how could he say no?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> At first I couldn't come up with anything for this prompt. Then it totally got away from me. Yikes. :D


	5. Prompt 22:Chaperone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Della's got a lot on her mind, and it makes her hesitant to go with her kids to a Halloween party

Della stared out the window of the second story of the mansion, watching the kids getting ready to go to a Halloween party. When she’d first returned to Earth, she’d wanted to just be with the kids, to take part in every activity, to revel in the reality of just being near them. To make herself a presence in their lives. To learn about them, to transform them from strangers with familiar faces into her children, her everything. It had happened in some ways immediately, but in others … in other ways it was still happening.

So lately, she had taken to watching from afar. Trying to see who they were independent of her. Because something had become clear to her, as she got to know them.

Children were molded by many things. By their world, by their own minds and interests, and of course, by the adults in their lives. She could see Donald so clearly in all three of the boys. They might not always show it, but they had learned a boundless compassion from him. Huey showed it in being the mother hen, always prepared to help. Dewey turned it into an attempt to make everyone laugh. Louie tried to hide it, but when the chips were down, he’d be there too. 

There were others, of course. Scrooge had imparted a certain level of adventurousness in them that he’d also instilled in herself and Donald. She could see Launchpad’s enthusiasm in Dewey, Goldie’s machinations in Louie, Gizmoduck’s approach to the world in Huey. But she was starting to accept that someone else had left a print on the boys too.

She had. But not by her actions. By her absence. Her disappearance had left its mark in the hollows of her sons’ souls. She could see it in the way Huey clung so tightly to his lists and schedules, as though if he could just prepare hard enough, then nothing bad would happen to anyone he loved. In the way Dewey tried to live in the moment, trying to wring everything out of the time he had with people -- maybe because he wasn’t counting on more time with them later. In how Louie held himself aloof from everyone -- even his own family a lot of the time. His eyes when she’d returned had hurt. That look … that hesitation to open himself up even a little bit, even though being without a mother must have been so hard, because accepting her meant that if she left again, she could rip that acceptance back out of him like a dagger. 

She’d hurt them in ways she’d never even considered when she got into that rocket ship. Donald -- had he known it would be like this, or had he just been afraid for her, or both and more besides? 

“Hey. Whatcha looking at?”

She turned to see Donald approaching up the stairs. She didn’t answer, just tilted her head out the window. Dewey had just proclaimed that Huey’s list of scary movies to watch during October was “lame” and Huey was now going through said list, item by item, explaining why each had a place in the plan. Louis stood a bit apart. When Uncle Scrooge walked up and asked him what was going on, he rolled his eyes in his brothers’ general direction and said flatly, “Party planning. Wooo.”

“Are you going to chaperone at the party?” Donald asked. 

He’d been a little hard to understand again when she got back, but fitting back into his particular way of talking had been like riding a bike. So she just shrugged and said, “Naaah. They don’t need an adult hanging around spoiling the Halloween fun. I mean, come on. Who wants to go to a party with their mom watching, am I right?”

She laughed it off, but he was her twin, and she should have known trying to fool him would be like trying to short-change their uncle. 

“Don’t you want to go with them?” he asked.

She thought of a dozen possible answers, but he’d just see through those as well. So she threw her hands up and said, “Fine! I do want to go. But I was just thinking .. and no jokes about that!” she warned as she saw that familiar grin start to grow on his face. He snickered as she continued, “It’s just … maybe they want you to go? Or Scrooge, or Mrs. Beakley. Or Duckworth! A ghost chaperone would be GREAT for a Halloween party. Maybe anyone is better than a mom who ditched them to go joyriding in space.” He voice fell almost to a whisper at the last bit and she looked away from both Donald and the window, not comfortable with either right now.

“They’ve forgiven you for being gone, you know that…”

“But it’s not just that. It’s like … I keep thinking, what if because of me they’re broken somehow?”

“What?!?” She couldn’t tell if he was outraged at her for thinking of herself like this, or just for speaking of the boys that way. “Della. Yeah, you being gone affected them. It affected all of us. But it didn’t break anyone. They’re great kids. I like who they are. I think they like who they are too. They are just glad to have you back. They don’t blame you for messing up anymore. And neither should you.”

How did he always just cut to the heart of things like this? How could he be so hopelessly corny and sincere at the same time? Must be all those emo ballads he wrote when they were kids. It had honed him for this. Or … maybe it was just who he was. 

“Instead of that, go down and ask if they want you to go to the party,” he urged, pushing her a little toward the top of the stairs. “They might surprise you.”

She smiled at him. Her fault or not, she had to admit -- she did like who her sons were too. “All right, all right, if you’re gonna twist my arm about it,” she said, heading down the stairs


	6. Prompt 28: Night in the Lab

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes, Gyro has to do things himself.

The door to the elevator hissed open, admitting Louie Duck and Gabby McStabberson into the the lab of Gyro Gearloose. The lights were low, on power-saver mode -- a few here and there, like emergency lights in a power outage, and the smattering of multicolored glows from the various displays.

“You’re sure it’s down here?” she asked, pointing her knife at the young duck. “The weapon you mentioned?”

“Yeah, yeah, sure,” he said, stress threading tension into his voice. “Come on, he’s a mad scientist. This place has to have more tech worth stealing than you could shake a tailfeather at.”

She glared around the dim room. There were plenty of computers and scientific devices, but she didn’t see anything that looked like a weapon. Or a storage area for weapons. So … where. A closet maybe?

She took a length of rope from her belt and bound it several times around the kid, tying him to one of the tables. He’d been a bit mouthy when she first grabbed him, but once she made it clear that she needed to get in and was absolutely willing to hurt a kid to do it, he’d definitely gotten a little more cooperative. She just needed one thing. One thing to trade to FOWL and she’d get in return information … information on her mother’s whereabouts…

“Excuse me, but  _ what  _ are you doing in here?” 

She whirled to see the scientist himself striding out of the darkness. From the rumpled state of his clothes, she guessed he’d fallen asleep at his desk accidentally. 

“Gyro Gearloose,” she said, bringing her knife to a ready position. “Just give me what I’m looking for and I’ll get out of here with no one getting hurt.”

Far from looking threatened by the knife, the man crossed his arms and said, “And what, pray tell, are you looking for?” He added a sarcastic edge to the last two words.

“A weapon,” she hissed.

He rolled his eyes. “All right, who was it? Mad scientist this. Mad scientist that. Just because I am a scientist and I happen to make things people don’t bother trying to understand sometimes, it doesn’t make me a-”

“The weapon,” she snapped. The fact that this scrawny, unarmed man seemed so unbothered by her presence -- more, that he seemed to be  _ irritated  _ by her presence -- unsettled her in some difficult to define way. She wasn’t scared of him, but something had begun to feel wrong. 

He let out an exasperated sigh. “Come on then,” he said. “Can’t have you killing one of Mr. McDuck’s relatives in the lab.” And he turned to walk away again, leaving her to follow, mystified, in his wake. 

As they walked over toward a door she hadn’t noticed before in the dim light, the professor kept muttering. “So, do you know how many villains have come here over the past few years? Because it’s a lot. You’d think I was running some sort of daycare for Duckburg bad guys. Showing up unannounced and wrecking the place.” He whirled on her so suddenly that she brought the knife up on reflex, but he only added, “I hope you aren’t planning on wrecking anything?”

Entirely weirded out by this conversation, she shook her head. “Not if you cooperate.”

“To be fair, she doesn’t seem quite as insane as most of them,” Louie’s voice piped up from across the lab.

Gyro grumbled something unintelligible and turned back toward the closet. 

“What?” Gabby asked sharply.

Gyro slammed a hand onto the control panel by the door, causing it to hiss open. “I said, do I have to do everything here?” 

As the door came open, something began to expand rapidly. The blue material loomed toward Gabby, who backed away. “What is?”

“I am so tired of people invading my space,” Gyro said from somewhere out of sight around the … balloon? “You just waltz in here, looking for whatever suits your needs, interrupting my work. And who has to deal with the aftermath?”

The balloon popped, releasing a blast of air that almost bowled Gabby over. As it hit, she had a momentary thought of  _ is that … the scent of violets _ ? Then her eyelids grew heavy. She swayed on her feet, struggling against the sudden lethargy grabbing her, but there was no fighting it. Another few seconds and she collapsed into a heap. Gyro, mask over his face, called to the computer to cycle the air in the room. As the sleeping gas cleared out, he pulled off his mask.

“Seriously,” he muttered. “They really make me do this?” 

At this rate, security should give  _ him  _ a stipend.


End file.
